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Benchmarking the POTUS (Part Three)

I appreciate the responses I received from Part Two of this series. Space prevents us from exploring them all here. Here is what we together have come up with as a list of the Key Accountabilities for the POTUS:

Faithfully executes the laws of the land

Defends the American People from physical and economic threats

Shares a cohesive leadership vision with Congress and the American People

Empowers appointees to assure their success

The next task for the stakeholders is to determine the measurements for these four Key Accountabilities. “What is the tangible evidence that the President faithfully executes the laws of the land?” I ask our assembled stakeholders.

“With all due respect to President Obama,” says Speaker Ryan, “It would mean that you can’t select which laws to prosecute and which ones to ignore. As an example of a breakdown of this faith, I suggest the failure of this administration to enforce our immigration laws.”

President Obama cannot let this go: “There is no way to prosecute, much less deport, the millions of undocumented people living in America today. The problem is one of acceptance and tolerance, not the letter of laws that were passed by folks who could not have foreseen the current problems. This is why I’ve been after you in Congress for some sensible legislation.”

I try to head another argument off at the pass. “This highlights one of the major problems we have in evaluating the performance of the POTUS. In a system as complex and incongruous as ours has become success in the eyes of some looks like failure in the eyes of others. What, if anything, are the universal elements of these accountabilities – the parts over which there would be no controversy?”

“It seems to me that this is a matter of character and of principle,” says Governor Haley. “It is a question of trustworthiness. So I would measure this by how consistently the person does what they say they will do.”

“This can be difficult in the midst of the realities of global politics. The winds blow one way, and the next day they can change direction,” says Secretary Kerry.

“Reactions such as force deployments may change, but the leadership vision should be constant,” says General Dunford.

“The issue of character and trustworthiness seems to me to apply to all of the Key Accountabilities,” says Attorney General Lynch. “Let me ask you this, Mr. Dardick. How do you measure character?”

It’s a simple question. But it is not an easy one to answer, especially when you’re interviewing someone for a job. We have to specify pertinent traits. Then, we need to accurately evaluate those qualities, without the benefit of working with them over a longer term – how they behave, what they value, what drives them, how they look at the world, and by extension, what their capacities are. We need some agreed upon scale and a proven instrument that provides predictive value. Some psychometric tools give us these kinds of insights. But their use in the workplace, especially in response to matters of “character,” is tricky, and must be properly handled. They must be used in the context of many other considerations.

So I respond: “We tackle this question in the next step of our benchmarking process, which is how we match a person to the role. The election process reveals the character of presidential hopefuls, as does the person’s record. But for those for whom we don’t have this information, and to minimize bias, it’s best to use validated psychometric instruments to accomplish two important objectives. First, to identify the attributes needed for success in the role. Second, to find candidates who closely match our specifications. The match won’t be exact, so once we select a person, we use their personal psychometric profile to optimize the role for them and to develop the competencies most critical for performance in their role.”

Rather than spend our remaining time developing the specific measurements for the current Key Accountabilities, we decide to dive into this phase. I’m good with this. I’ve already made a mental note that some kind of special review panel, one that does not yet exist, would need to be created to continually evaluate and provide feedback in the effort to provide meaningful measurements. They would likely use surveys and other key indicators to correlate the desired outcomes identified in the Key Accountabilities with the decisions and actions of the President.

We spend the next 90 minutes responding to the questions in the instrument that I selected, always keeping in mind that we are answering for the role, not a person. This process spurs some discussion, but thankfully it lacks the polarization of earlier exchanges. I’m feeling good that the team is finally coming together to collectively determine the best answers.

Once we’re done with this phase, I thank all of the participants for their valuable contributions and adjourn the panel. I will now go back and compile the results into a formalized benchmark. The final version is typically used to attract, select, develop, and retain the best talent for critical roles. Once someone is hired (elected, in this case), we often produce a gap report to highlight the differences between their personal attributes and those of the role itself. I typically use three or four technologies to get as accurate a look as possible. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to zero in on just one of those.

Originally developed in the 1950’s through the early 1970’s by Dr. Robert Hartman, it is a profile that utilizes the science of axiology to describe the way that a person develops their judgment of what is good or bad in very specific way. The instrument isn’t a true judge of character or ethics, but it does reveal an uncanny amount of information about how a person views the world and their place in it. The research of Dr. Bill Bonstetter and his scientific team, conducted over the past twenty years or so, has clarified and distilled the results of this instrument in order to link it to performance in the workplace. Their version yields outputs measured in 25 competencies, as follows:

Conceptual Thinking

Conflict Management

Continuous Learning

Creativity

Customer Focus

Decision Making

Diplomacy & Tact

Empathy

Employee Development/Coaching

Flexibility

Futuristic Thinking

Goal Achievement

Interpersonal Skills

Leadership

Negotiation

Personal Accountability

Persuasion

Planning & Organizing

Presenting

Problem Solving Ability

Resiliency

Self-Management

Teamwork

Understanding & Evaluating Others

Written Communication

The responses we gave in the stakeholders meeting would have derived a chart that ranks these in order from most important, to important, to somewhat important, to not important. When completing this survey, it’s tempting to just say that they all matter, because you can make a case that this is true. The problem is that you will never find human beings for whom all competencies are rated highly. The reason for this is that there are tradeoffs between these competencies. Highly functioning people can be relatively stronger on most if not all of the competencies than others, but there will always be a range of relative personal strengths and weaknesses. So I moderated the discussion to make sure that we achieved an adequate differential.

Our Benchmark for the POTUS revealed these as the top five competencies. (I’d like your opinion if you think the list should be different.)

Leadership

Decision Making

Resiliency

Presenting

Diplomacy & Tact

When matching candidates for a role, it’s helpful to not only look at the top competencies, but also the bottom ones. If a person is strong in an area, they will tend to use that strength, even if the job doesn’t call for it. So it’s wise to avoid hiring people who are strong in areas that are not needed in their role. Here are the bottom five competencies for the POTUS:

Conflict Management

Problem Solving Ability

Employee Development/Coaching

Written Communication

Creativity

The next part of our thought experiment is to compare candidates to these established parameters. For the sake of brevity, we’ll look at only the six candidates who are currently polling in double digits. To do this correctly, we would give each of them the instrument to complete online and then compare the results, the selection panel being blind to which candidate has which results. This further reduces bias. In this case, I’m going to have to use my imagination based upon the impressions I get from their campaigns along with their professional track records to project the results. We’ll take them one at a time:

You may not agree with my assessments. I’m certain that if the candidates were to complete the instrument, we would be surprised by much of the results. That is why these instruments are so valuable – they help us see past our personal biases.

If you’re so inclined, have a look at the lists above. Try to compare each set of personal competencies for the candidates with the POTUS benchmark. You should look at the competencies, yes, but also the Key Accountabilities. What do you believe about each candidate that would serve that person well in each of these areas? What do see that could be a potential shortcoming?

Here’s one way to look at the results. For every competency that matches either the top or bottom five, give a point. For every top competency for a candidate that appears in the bottom five for the position, and vice versa, subtract a point. Evaluating my results, Dr. Carson comes out on top with a score of 3, followed by Ted Cruz at 2, then Marco Rubio at 1. Trump, Clinton, and Sanders are all tied for fourth at 0.

If you view the upcoming debates and election coverage through this lens, you may pick up on things that would otherwise escape your notice. If this turns out to be the case, then these three weeks of work of benchmarking the POTUS will have been worth it.